The Globalization of Science in the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-20th Centuries

This conference brings together scholars from the Middle East, Europe, the United States, and Canada to explore important issues related to the history of science in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during the 18th-20th centuries—a critical period of change and modernization when Middle Easterners were concerned about the rising power of European states and societies and the weakness of Islamic ones in relation to them. Conference participants will present papers which consider the nature of encounters between Islamic societies and the west as the balance of power between these regions shifted in the favor of Europe, including the role of science in modernization and development in the MENA region, the relationship between modern science and religion (Islam), the effects of European imperialism on the spread of modern science in the MENA (and the Global South more generally), and the use of science and technology by MENA states and societies to combat foreign domination in the region. Read more»

This conference has been organized by Sahar Bazzaz, College of the Holy Cross, and Jane Murphy, Colorado College. It is sponsored by the McFarland Center and funded by the Rehm Family Fund.

Schedule

FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2017

9:30 a.m.: Welcome and Introductions
Tom Landy, director of the McFarland Center at Holy Cross; Sahar Bazzaz, associate professor of history and advisor for Middle Eastern Studies at Holy Cross; and Jane Murphy, associate professor of history, Colorado College

Doubled Selves or Separate Worlds?: L. Ferdinando Marsigli and Ottoman Intellectuals in Constantinople (1679)
Duygu YildirimPh.D. student, Department of History at Stanford University and visiting fellow, Department of the History of Science at Harvard University

Innovations from the Levant: Smallpox Inoculation and Perceptions of Scientific Medicine
Victoria N. MeyerAssistant professor of history, University of Arizona

‘Strange Sciences’: Close Reading Meets Network Analysis of al-‘ulum al-Ghariba in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries
Jane Murphy Associate professor of history, Colorado College

When Geology Clashes with the Bible: Ottoman Historians Discuss the Creation Account
Hakan KaratekeProfessor of Ottoman and Turkish culture, language and literature and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago

“Let Everything Useful be Permitted”: Daghestani Modernity and the Technological Sublime
Rebecca GouldReader, comparative literature and translation studies, University of Bristol (UK)
Author, "Writers and Rebels: The Literatures of Insurgency in the Caucasus" (Yale University Press, 2016)

4:30-6 p.m.: KEYNOTE ADDRESS: “Look at the Fish: Decomposing Global Histories of Science”
Carla NappiAssociate professor of history and Canada Research Chair in Early Modern Studies, University of British ColumbiaWatch the video»

Ottoman Debt as a Problem of Knowledge
Daniel StolzVisiting assistant professor of history, Northwestern University

Figuring the Egyptian Endemic: The Endemic Disease Section of the Egyptian Ministry of Public Health and the formulation of tropical medicine, 1928-1944
Jennifer L. DerrAssistant professor of history, University of California, Santa Cruz

The Wise Women and Winifred: Fertility Talismans and the Magical Role of Ethnographic Collections in Interwar Egypt
Taylor MoorePh.D. candidate specializing in Modern Middle Eastern History, Rutgers University

Outposts of Western Science? Building Genetic Laboratories in Lebanon and Israel in the 1960s
Elise K. BurtonPh.D. candidate, joint program for history and Middle Eastern studies, Harvard University

Archaeological Circulations: Egypt, India and Scientific Geographies in the Early Cold War
William CarruthersGerda Henkel Stiftung Research Scholar and visiting guest scholar, German Historical Institute London